Is the Immigration and Reform Control Act of 1986 enforceable?

Colorado Immigration Examiner
12/23/2008
Source …..

While there is no doubt that many illegals work long hours at dirty and dangerous jobs, it is low wages, not the type of job, that American workers reject. For many American businesses, employing illegal aliens at wages so low citizens could not afford to take the job is great for profits and shareholders, explaining why businesses, from meat-packing to landscaping to construction, hire illegal immigrants. Companies are rarely punished for this.

For nearly 20 years, it has been a crime to hire illegal aliens. Congress passed the Immigration and Reform Control Act of 1986, which provided that employers could be fined up to $10,000 for every illegal worker they hired, and repeat offenders could be sent to jail. When President Reagan signed the act, he called the sanction the “keystone” of the law by removing the incentive for illegal immigration, the elimination of job opportunities that draws illegals to the United States. Making it a crime to hire an illegal worker was seen as a dramatic step.

Unfortunately, no one was responsible for enforcing the law. Between 1999-2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), which subsequently was merged into the Department of Homeland Security. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing illegal immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000.